SB 369 . 

W63 * Orange in Northern 

Copy 1 

3tf ■ 



and Central 
California 




PxiblisKed by 



California State Board of Trade 



San Francisco, Cal. 



THE ORANGE 



IN 



NORTHERN AND CENTRAL 

CALIFORNIA 



By E. J. WICKSON 



Professor of Agricultural Practice, University of California, and Horticulturist of the 
California Experiment Station; author of "California Fruits and How to Grow 
Them," and "California Vegetables in Garden and Field;" Horticultural Editor 
of the " Pacific Rural Press," of San Francisco. 



From the San Francisco Chronicle of January J, 1903; 
revised and extended by the writer for 



SPECIAL PUBLICATION BY THE 

California State Board of Trade 

Office and Exhibit 
UNION FERRY BUILDING - SAN FRANCISCO 



3k3 
>/V63 



THE ORANGE 



IN- 



Northern and Central California 

By E. J. WICKSON 



CITRUS fruit trees have been successfully grown in suitable situa- 
tions in Northern California for nearly half a century. The 
famous orange tree of Bidwell's Bar, started from an Acapulco 
seed in Sacramento in 1855 and planted out in Butte county in 1859, 
which has been so generally made to stand sponsor for the demonstra- 
tion of citrus conditions north of the Tehachapi mountains, is not 
entitled to all the distinction which has been heaped upon it. In the 
fifties there were other orange and lemon trees growing in widely 
separated northern localities. It was, even in early days, the proper 
thing to include citrus trees among ornamental dooryard plantings. 

This question naturally suggests itself : Why, if such early demon- 
stration was had, were large commercial plantings of the orange at the 
- ti « north delayed until the last decade? Several good rea- 

_ T ' / sons can be adduced. In the first place a disposition 
North , , . . , 

toward wider planting did at one time arise but quickly 

subsided. In the later seventies when the general rush 
to fruit growing, which has given us our present vast extension of the 
interests, began, citrus fruits were not overlooked. There was a sharp 
demand for orange trees. Southern California nurseries had a large 
overstock of trees budded on China lemon roots which Southern Cali- 
fornia planters had learned to despise as forcing excessive growth of 
tree and coarse, large fruit. These soft monstrosities were sent north 
by carloads and sold to unwary planters, who thought they were get- 
ting a great deal for their money. Such trees were planted in all sorts 
of situations and their broad leaves made a tine display as soon as 



4 

planted. Then came the cold winter of 1878-79. The temperature in 
places reasonably situated was not very low — not lower than is fre- 
quently encountered in Southern California, and not low enough to 
injure well planted old trees anywhere in the State, though it did 
destroy some ill-placed ones and helped to define suitable situations 
for citrus culture. But the degree reached was fatal to those soft 
trees on a lemon foundation almost everywhere, and the disappoint- 
ment of the new planters, who based calculations upon such trees, 
discouraged them from further efforts toward citrus culture for some 
time. It was not a logical conclusion. 

But there was another and more logical reason why the well suited 

lands in the central part of the State were not at that time given to 

citrus fruit culture. Citrus fruits require irrigation 

everywhere. Deciduous fruits, including the grape, do 
Deciduous . . , - , ,, ~., „ 

not require irrigation except m places of shallow soil or 

light rainfall. Without waiting for irrigation facilities 
then, hundreds of thousands of acres of deep valley loams were imme- 
diately available for the planting of deciduous fruits. The growers 
understood these fruits, while the orange to an English-speaking peo- 
ple was an unsolved problem. The long list of deciduous fruits had 
varieties to suit the tastes and ambitions of all planters and the op- 
portunity for selling many different fruits and their different products 
seemed illimitable. 

No citrus fruits had been shipped out of the State on a commercial 
scale, and no one knew if they could be profitably. The central and 
northern districts threw their full strength into the deciduous fruit 
interests and the result has justified the effort, for, at the present time, 
the annual shipments of deciduous orchard fruits, fresh, dried and 
canned, and the grape, both fresh, as raisins and as wine and brandy, 
have reached a total value of about $30,000,000 — almost all of it from the 
regions of California north of theTehachapi mountains. The engross- 
ing requirements of this grandly successful undertaking gave northern 
growers, packers and capitalists no leisure to think seriously of citrus 
fruit planting; that was left for a decade and a half to the special 
attention of the Southern California people and they developed it 
splendidly for the settlement and upbuilding of their portion of the 
State — reaching a total value of product sold beyond State lines of 
about $8,000,000. Citrus fruits were neglected at the north because 
the people were too busy developing a greater fruit industry to which 
their conditions were superlatively suited. 



5 

During the last few years new interest lias arisen in citrus fruit 

growing in Northern California, and all the scattered experiences of 

_.,. ,, the last half century are becoming of inestimable 

Now a Well . . ... , . ° . „,, 

-,.,,., , value in guiding this planting aright. There are 

Established , . , , ' , 

_ , several important reasons why the north has now 

Industry t \ J 
turned to the orange. 

First — Deciduous fruit production has reached large volumes, mar- 
gins have become reduced to those which assert themselves in any 
well established and extensive industry, and some of the early glamour 
has gone out of it. It will henceforth proceed soberly, and conse- 
quently safely, to grand aggregates which no one can foresee, but it is 
readily demonstrable that, with the present rush of population to the 
more wintry districts of the Pacific Slope, the opening of Asiatic con- 
nections and the victories being- attained each year in the distant 
East and in Europe, our production of deciduous fruits and their pro- 
ducts will go steadily forward. Increased interest in citrus fruit plant- 
ing in Northern California is in no sense a menace to the deciduous 
fruit industry. It is merely a new graft upon a very vigorous indus- 
trial stock. 

Second — Owing to natural conditions, which will be briefly ex- 
plained presently, orange growing can be pursued at the north with- 

„ , „ out competition with the main crop in Southern 

Early Fruit 

_. ' California. The Northern California crop will be 

F iiu* Flavor 

consumed before the bulk of the southern crop 

moves from the trees. 

Third — All California oranges have characteristics and qualities 
which are recognized as of distinctive excellence and, therefore, have 
a commercial advantage, which, under a wise system of protection 
against free entry of cheap tropical fruit, enables them to compensate 
the high-grade American labor which is employed in their growth, 
packing and marketing and leave a reasonable return to requite the 
growers' effort and investment. This being so, the production, so long 
as protection is continued, justifies extension of the effort to produce 
an American orange for Americans. 

Fourth — Semi-tropical fruits are nature's demonstration of the 

existence in a locality of a climate which promotes health, comfort 

„ and a maximum of physical and intellectual attain- 

Proves F J 

»,.,, „,,. , ment in mankind. Probably all that is urged against 
Mild Climate ' J & & 

tropical climates as enervating and depressing of 

human standards is trite, but not a word of it applies to an arid semi- 



6 

tropical climate, in which the blessing of dry air and freedom from 
the debilitating effect of temperature-extremes rejuvenate the old and 
weary and bring the young to that stature and vigor which all new- 
comers notice in the rising generation of Californians. Of the exist- 
tence of such conditions a well-grown orange of the California type 
is unimpeachable evidence. It has brought 100,000 people and 
$ 100,00° 000 of capital to Southern California which otherwise would 
not have come. 

Fifth — It is but a corollary of the foregoing that the successful 
and profitable production of citrus fruits is, par excellence, the motive 
force in promoting colony efforts and drawing into horti- 
culture the class of people which constitute the most 
' ' desirable element in the upbuilding of a great State. 

The splendid development of Southern California com- 
munities upon a horticultural basis points the way to even greater 
achievements in other parts of the State which are in some respects 
even better endowed by nature, and the citrus fruits become then the 
token, not alone of superior natural endowments, but of the type of 
manhood which can use them to the best advantage. None know this 
better than the Southern California people themselves, and it is a 
demonstration of the desirability both of the natural resources of 
Northern California in citrus lines, and of citrus fruit culture itself, 
that in all the newer citrus regions at the north there are to be found, 
among the leading planters and promoters, Southern Californians who 
have sold their early plantings at the South at high prices to newer 
comers and have started anew in the northern districts, where they 
find cheaper land, more abundant water supply and fruit which is 
marketed at an earlier date. 

The claim has been made above that citrus culture conditions 
exist in suitable situations in California all the way from Shasta to 

-,r, ^-r ^, San Diego county, and historical evidence has 

Why Northern & J ' . 

„ , ... . been cited to prove it. It is so surprising that 

California J . \ ° , 

^ practically the same climate should be found 

Grows Oranges f J , . 

through a distance of between seven and eight 

degrees of latitude that many, even of those who have lived in Cali- 
fornia, do not appreciate the fact nor understand the explanation of it. 
If we should take the north and south distance of about 500 miles 
which separate Shasta and San Diego counties and lay it off on the 
Atlantic coast we would find Georgia at one end and New York at the 
other. Between these two localities on the Atlantic there is a vast 



7 

difference in climate; within the two points named in California there 
is so close a similarity that both meet the temperature requirements 
of the orange. Why is there such a difference on the two coasts ? 

First — Because, owing to ocean influences predominating over land 
influences, the west coast of continents in the northern hemisphere 
are warmer in winter than the east coasts. There is no citrus country 
between New York and Georgia ; there is citrus country, in proper 
situations, all the way from Shasta to San Diego. 

Second — California is not only blessed with benign ocean influ- 
ences, but Northern California is additionally protected from low- 
winter temperatures by the mountain barrier of the Sierra Nevada, 
extending southward from the multiplied masses of protecting eleva- 
tions in the Shasta region, while Southern California enjoys the pro- 
tection of the Sierra Madre and other uplifts on the north and east of 
her citrus region. Northern blizzards are, therefore, held back from 
entrance to California and are forced to confine themselves to their 
natural southerly and easterly direction over the interior parts of the 
Pacific Slope, while the great blizzards of the northwest traverse the 
Mississippi valley and, if they have sufficient impetus, extend to the 
gulf and carry destruction to semi-tropical growths even in Northern 
Florida. The ocean then bringing warmth and the high mountains 
defending against cold, combine their influences to give nearly the 
whole length of California semi-tropical winter temperatures. Lati- 
tude becomes a small factor in the California climates. 

Third — Although this striking similarity does exist, there is 

another even more startling proposition involved and that is the in- 

-MT-i t-i •* fluences exerted by the presence of the Coast Range 

Wliy bruits 

_. ,. as the western boundary of the great interior valley 

Ripen Earlier , . ■ . , i 

of the State and intervening between that great 
at the North „ , , „,, , ., 7 , - 

valley and the ocean. The several ridges of the 

Coast Range, with their inclosed small valleys, serve as a colossial 
wind-break against northwest winds, which might otherwise, now and 
again, bring a temperature too low for citrus fruits, where now they 
are safe from injury. The chief effect of these mountains is to protect 
the northern interior valleys and foothills from the raw winds of early 
springtime and to allow the sun, as he crosses each day higher in his 
course, to expend the increasing heat directly in promoting vernal 
verdure. The result is quick growth in all lines — early pasturage, 
early grain harvest and early fruit ripening. The valleys of Southern 
California, which have thus far been largely developed, have no high 



8 

range between them and the ocean. The influence of this opening of 
the valleys of Southern California is not so unfavorable as such an 
opening would he at the north, because ocean winds are gentler and 
warmer there and there is winter service rendered by this eastward 
trend of the Southern California mountains, as has been said, but the 
fact remains that the absence of high barriers against ocean influences 
retards the springtime and causes a slow development of summer con- 
ditions and late ripening of fruits, while the presence of high barriers 
at the north so hastens springtime and summer heat that early sum- 
mer fruits in California are shipped from the North to the South — a 
thing which does not occur anywhere else in the northern hemisphere. 
This early marketing relieves the growers from much anxiety and 
costly frost-fighting because the fruit, which is always more suscepti- 
ble to injury than the tree, is out of the way before the frost period, 
which usually begins about Christmas. 

There is in Southern California, east of the mountains, a district 
which has thus far been but scantly developed, where protection from 
ocean influences tends to early ripening of fruits. The same is true of 
Bome parts of Arizona adjacent and small quantities of early fruits 
move westward and northward from that region. That region is not 
in view in this discussion, for too little has been accomplished in citrus 
lines to warrant conclusions. 

Fourth — Still another feature of local topography must he men- 
tioned as influencing citrus conditions mirth and smith and explaining 

„ „ why winter temperature has fallen no lower at the 

Far From • * 

,, a north than at the south. At the north the snow fields 

the Snows 

of the high mountains arc further from the valleys and 

mesas where citrus fruits are grown than they arc at the smith. The 
benches and low foothills of the Sacramento valley, for instance, are 
forty to fifty miles from the range to the cast of them and there inter- 
vene countless ridges of high foothills and small valleys, and before 
the citrus plantations can be reached by the descending air currents 
they are considerably warmed by rustling over so much land which 
has been heated by the ample winter sunshine. From many of the 
southern citrus regions one looks almost directly upward and outward 
upon the grand snowclad mountains whose crests are but fifteen to 
twenty-five miles away. It is a good scenic effect — ripening oranges 
and dazzling snowfields in the same glance of the eye. It is not so 
grand as a pomological proposition. 

Fifth — Another protecting influence for citrus fruit trees from low 



9 

temperatures in the latter part of December and January is the occur- 
rence of land fog in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys. Sharp 
frosts come with clear dry air and are prevented by a veil of atmos- 
pheric moisture. The greater moisture of interior situations at the 
north during the months mentioned generates a frost-fending fog 
which largely takes the place of the artificial protection which South- 
ern California growers produce by recourse to burning crude oil and 
evaporation from (lamp combustibles. 

Although, as lias been shown, Northern California fruit planters 
were late in taking up orange growing commercially, they have com- 
Rimd pensated for it by speed of accomplishment. The ship- 

Growtll rnen ts of their fruit were eight times as large last year as 
they were five years before. The acreage of orchard has, 
of course, increased rapidly because early marketing experience has 
been very encouraging, and the reports of the Assessors to the State 
Board of Equalization show that there are now planted in the legions 
north of the Tehachapi 2,540,737 more orange trees than there were 
growing five years ago. 

At the present time orange growing has a very promising outlook. 

Aside from the advantages which pertains to keeping ahead of the 

„ # . . o main Southern crop and thus helping to fill out the 

„ ,. ', ^ year at the East with California oranges, the general 
Outlook V. . , , , . 

outlook for much larger consumption at the East and 

abroad, is very encouraging. The orange is passing from its old status 
as a luxury to its proper recognition as a staple winter fruit for dwell- 
ers in cold climates. For such use the agreeable acid and sprightly 
flavor of the California fruit especially commend it. The consumption 
of the fruit per capita, away from California, is still small and will be 
greatly increased when people know better its desirability and the 
reasonable prices at which it can be secured. This wider distribution 
is to be confidently expected and the rapid increase in population 
through the great west and north is each year giving California grow- 
ers nearer markets of growing consumptive capacity. It will be of 
great advantage to the whole country as well as to California to have 
production steadily increased. 

But while there is this favorable outlook and while citrus condi- 
tions do exist through such large areas of California, there is still 
danger of loss and disappointment through unwary 

,. _ . individual investments and unwise locations of citrus 

ot Caution . mi , , , , 

colony enterprises. 1 be tracts of land tor orange plant- 



10 

ing even in a favorable citrus climate are limited in area, and every 
citrus climate has numerous places where local meterological con- 
ditions will prove destructive to the profit of the enterprise if not to 
the life of the trees. The orange is a hardy tree, judged within its 
temperature limits, but there is no money in a tree which is subjected 
to any kind of hardship. For this reason the selection of a good depth 
of strong, free loam should be made, for such is essential not only to 
good growth of the young tree, but to its support through the long 
productive life which the orange enjoys. Depth of good soil is not 
only a storehouse of plantfood, which will postpone the use of pur- 
chased fertilizers, but it is a reservoir of water so that irrigation can be 
applied in larger amounts at longer intervals. While it is quite possi- 
ble to grow an orange tree and to secure good fruit on shallower soils 
if moisture conditions are kept just right by frequent use of water and 
fertilizers in just the right amounts, such conditions impose heavy 
burdens in their constant requirements of extra care and expenditure 
and these are handicaps of no small economic importance. The tree 
cannot live upon climate as a man may, because a tree cannot specu- 
lative; it must have a good foundation in the earth as well as a good 
outlook in the sky. 

Growing orange trees on defective soils has brought disappoint- 
ment and loss in Northern California as the same effort has in the 

_ • . South. In one respect the danger is perhaps greater. 

Conditions ,„. . v ... ' 

the ample supplies of irrigation water available have 
to Avoid . . ' 

encouraged over irrigation where trees have been planted 

over hardpan and drainage is absent. Dying-back and yellow leaf 
have appeared in some groves and have been accounted for by digging 
to rind the roots bedded in mud and slush. All plantings over clay 
subsoils should be guarded against this danger. Digging deep holes 
and filling them with good soil is setting a trap for the future failure 
of the tree unless the deep hole is properly drained by the nature of 
the subsoil or by artificial provision. On the other hand, planting 
over a gravelly subsoil is often disappointing because the water passes 
through the subsoil as through a sieve, and the tree shows distress 
although generous amounts are applied to the surface. Wide observa- 
tion through the State teaches that such warnings are needed by the 
unwary. 

There are also a few comments upon local modifications of climate, 
even in sections generally suited to orange culture, which should be 
made. Frosty places must be avoided. A few feet difference in 



11 
elevation may change profit to loss, but one must not therefore 
draw hasty conclusions that all small elevations are favorable. 
The experience of the last few years shows that nothing is, 
on the whole, more dangerous than the warm bottom land in 
a small elevated valley, which seems naturally protected on all 
sides. There are many such places which are far more treacherous 
than the uplands of the broad valleys which may he considerably 
lower. The benches around the sides of the small valley may be safe 
and the bottom of the same valley dangerous because there is no ade- 
quate outflow for cold air to the large valley below. Look out for 
small valleys which have divides of crumpled hills where they debouch 
into the main valley. Cold air can he dammed and held hack; con- 
sequently the low land of a small valley may be worse than lower land 
in the main valley because in the latter there are air currents which 
prevent accumulation of cold air in particular places. These air move- 
ments make some plantings in the upper plains of the main valley safe 
though the whole region may seem to the eye rather Hat and low, hut 
of course broad sinks of the main valley may also be dangerous. Too 
great elevations are to he guarded against. Where one approaches 
the reach-down of mountain temperatures and loses the warming 
influences of the valley mesas, the danger line is at hand. 

An ample water supply is essential. Small waterings which may 
bring satisfactory growth to a young tree are no measure of the needs 
of a bearing tree. The orange is using water all the year. Its crop 
requires nearly a year to reach maturity. Doth in leaf growth and 
fruit growth it nearly doubles the activity of the deciduous tree and 
all the time it is pumping water with its roots and pouring forth 
water into the air through its exposed surfaces. ^ No investment in 
orange planting can be profitable without assurance of adequate water 
supply. 



e^£ 



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